Gloves, Congress, and Philanthropy

Graduating from Harvard in 1878, Mr. Littauer returned to his birthplace and home at Gloversville, New York. Here he manufactured gloves until his election to Congress in 1896. He retained his seat for five terms, retiring voluntarily at the end of the 59th Congress in 1907.

Since then his activities have been largely in the philanthropic field. In Gloversville he erected the Nathan Littauer Hospital and Laboratory in memory of his father. This led him to a broad interest in the support of medical research, particularly in the fields of pneumonia, diabetes, cancer, mental hygiene, and heart disease.

Foundation Established

As a result of this interest he established a foundation on his seventieth birthday in 1929, endowing it with $1,100,000, the income and capital of which was to be used without restriction "to enlarge the realms of human knowledge, to promote the general, moral, mental, and physical improvement of society so that the sum total of human welfare and wisdom may be increased and the cause of better understanding among all mankind promoted."

With this broad purpose, he has provided the opportunity to hundreds of young men and women for higher education toward professional and social betterment careers. In 1925 he established the Nathan Littauer Professorship of Jewish Literature and Philosophy at Harvard